


no tragedy, and I won't mourn

by dust_motes



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), M/M, Polyamory, V Relationship Turning Into a Triad, kind of established relationship, kind of getting together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-16 09:56:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21269159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dust_motes/pseuds/dust_motes
Summary: Jim tumbling—toward Adam, toward Pritchard, sometimes simply down.





	no tragedy, and I won't mourn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).

> Title and section titles from _Hell_ by Dear Sherlock.

  


i. (with aching chest and heavy bones)

Pritchard called him on the burner in the middle of the workday. The annoying ringtone shrilled out once, then Pritchard disconnected, but Jim somehow doubted he'd just gotten butt-dialed.

_Fuck_. 

Mac smirked from the other side of the desk, looking down at Jim's usual cell lying silently beside the computer and a mug of coffee that had gone cold two hours ago. "New phone?" he asked.

Jim fixed him with an unimpressed look; it had the added benefit of giving him a moment to run over possibilities in his head. Pritchard had either gotten himself into a shitstorm of trouble or—No, actually there was no other option. Even with Adam in Moscow, Pritchard's overblown pride wouldn't let him call Jim unless he'd gone and done something monumentally stupid and needed help. 

Unless it was a matter of life or death. 

_Fucking fuck_. 

There was no good way to tell your second-in-command, _Look, let's reschedule, I gotta go save my boyfriend's boyfriend's ass_, even though, Jim realized with a slight start, that was exactly what he was gonna try to do. Pritchard had edges and a way of getting under your skin. Three minutes into a conversation you wanted to strangle him with a shoelace; that need had never really left Jim, but if he wanted every person who'd ever annoyed him to die, Prague would've become a city of ghosts at the latest two years ago.

His shoes scraped against the floor under the desk. Where the fuck was Manderley when you needed an inconspicuous escape route from office duties? Where was his assistant with a stack of papers to sign? A crack. Mac closed the folder he'd been holding with disdain; Jim's attention jumped back to him. "Sorry," he said. "Something on my mind. Let's go over the team B's expenses—"

Mac linked his fingers above his head and stretched. "I'd rather bail. The math's about to give me an ulcer." He poked the left side of his stomach. "Here. I can feel it forming."

Out of Mac's various ridiculous assholishnesses over the years— "MacReady," Jim snapped. "You can't bail from a budget meeting."

Mac looked at him with calculating, crinkled eyes, one eyebrow cocked up, and Jim thought, _Oh_. His thumb slid off the desk; it had been worrying circles into the surface ever since the call, but Jim noticed only now. Mac had incomprehensibly offered him something _kind_; Jim had no idea how to take him up on his words. He didn't know how to simply get up and walk out.

"My ulcer's about to burst." Mac rose from his chair. "I think I'm gonna go to the medbay. Find me when you're ready again to talk about how much Jensen's coffee is costing us or whatever."

He was almost by the door by the time Jim forced his throat to work. "Thanks."

Mac turned to point a finger at him. "But I swear to God, Miller, if that wasn't a booty call but, I don't even know, your ex giving you grief about the kids or your cleaning lady once again complaining that she has nothing to clean in your apartment, I'm gonna hunt you down and force you to have fun."

"Booty call?" Jim muttered, gathering his stuff. "What are you, five?"

•

He'd always thought the advanced tracking app Pritchard had installed on his phone (and his laptop, and his personal terminal, and his pocket secretary) was a little too much, but he was grateful for it now. It showed Pritchard in Překážka, not that far from Adam's apartment. Could've been worse. And Jim would rather have a gun for what was coming next. An unregistered one.

The dot blinking at Jim about Pritchard's location hadn't moved for the whole metro ride and the not quite frantic but fast run to Adam's; Jim was—not exactly worried, he didn't _worry_ about Pritchard, but—antsy. He wanted this over with; he wanted to be back at the office and not dealing with Pritchard's idiocy.

His feet flew on the stairs leading up the Zeleň Apartments building and he was punching the code into the keypad by Adam's door with angry jabs almost before he came to a halt. He hoped Adam wasn't monitoring the apartment. Belatedly, it occurred to Jim that no, if no alarm sounded, Adam would probably just assume it was one of them—and God, Jim didn't even know where Pritchard lived; maybe he was swinging by Adam's every day.

Was Adam alright? He was scheduled to check in with the office the day after tomorrow and—and Jim couldn't afford to think about him right now.

The safe sprung open; he must've been too eager with the punching again. A variety of stun guns, fake passports, hopefully blank, but he didn't have time to check, and finally, at the very back, a disassembled rifle and two pistols. He hesitated, hands wavering, but after a half-second consideration, he ignored the stun guns and took the rifle out.

He was no aug. He had no advantage except for the precision of his sight and the sureness of his hand and if he had to shoot his way into whatever shady place Pritchard was being held in, he couldn't risk the stunned fuckers getting up behind his back. And why was he even discussing this with himself? It'd been his job for more than twenty-five years; he knew how these things went.

Jim ran out, two pistols weighing down the holster under his armpits, a bag with the rifle in his hand, and barely remembered to close the door behind his back.

•

It was a warehouse at the very end of a deserted cul-de-sac. Convenient, both for the owners and Jim. The sole guard, legs augmented to the knees shining dully in back-alley shadow, was maybe eighteen, maybe twenty, and Jim's expensive jacket gave him pause. It shouldn't have. Jim punched him in the throat and when he stumbled back, he put him into a chokehold. One second, two, three. The kid struggled and with his augmented legs giving him the boost, Jim would soon lose his upper hand. So he grabbed the kid by the skull and twisted his forearms and the neck—broke. Like a straw.

Unlike most deaths brought on by Jim's hand, this one was bloodless and quiet. The part of Jim that had hoped he'd feel something other than the sense of overwhelming urgency always pushing him forward during missions reacted with relief—the kid's empty eyes, when Jim looked into them while laying the body down, got to him. Enough for a nightmare or two in the coming weeks.

God, he hated Prague. And right now, he hated Pritchard, too. 

He hated him all the way dragging the body away from the warehouse’s entrance and deeper into the shadows in the corner of the cul-de-sac, but he didn't stop and when he returned to the previous spot, his head was clear.

The ground-level windows were all shattered. He crouched under one, carefully unzipping the bag. It didn't make a sound. The halting conversation coming from the inside was, at least, reassuring; the distinctive cadence of Pritchard's didn't seem much affected by whatever was going on inside. At least he wasn't hurt. Yet.

Jim snapped the clip in and risked a peek inside. Pritchard, tied to a chair. Three other guys; one standing behind him, two a few steps to the right, close to one another. He'd barely have to move the muzzle to get them both, but the one behind Pritchard posed more danger. Easy decision, then. Jim rested the barrel on the sill and took a lungful of air. His pulse slowed down; he felt as if he didn't need to breathe. 

He pulled the trigger once, adjusted the sightline between one heartbeat and the next, fired twice, so quickly the shots almost rang out as one, and waited for the commotion on the upper floors. Ten seconds, twenty, nothing. It was done.

•

Pritchard glared at him when he went inside. "I swear to God," Jim greeted him, "if you say 'took you long enough', I _will_ deck you."

"I'm saying: get me the fuck out of this chair."

There was a knife on the desk with the laptop by the window; Jim put the rifle down and cut the rope with it and thought, briefly, about the ridiculousness of his life. "You have your personal terminal on you?" Pritchard asked, rolling his shoulders; he was by the computer in a blink of an eye. Jim looked at him with incredulity, but before he had time to ask, Pritchard waved his hand,. "No, of course you don't, why am I even asking. Fine, new plan. Jensen's, now." His fingers were flying over the keyboards; something above them moved. Cameras. Fuck. 

Then the red recording lights under the lenses went out and Pritchard got up. "Footage's gone. Let's go."

Jim, disassembling the rifle by his side with quick, efficient movements, didn't even lift his head to glare at him. "Kind of busy here. And don't you think you should at least tell me what the fuck this was about?"

"Doesn't matter. Hurry up."

Jim hurried, but not because Pritchard told him so.

•

On their way back, the cops on patrol narrowed their eyes at Pritchard, but their gaze slid off Jim's form as if they hadn't seen him at all. A nat in a tailored suit in Překážka had to have business here to attend to; disturbing him was the opposite of what they'd always been told to do.

Jim took Pritchard the elbow and linked their arms. "Slow the fuck down, we are drawing attention."

"Not with you looking like that, we aren't. And I need to do something, like, half an hour ago."

"What?" Jim hissed at him, suddenly twice as angry. "Didn't you have enough for one day? If that's another of your idiotic plans—"

Pritchard huffed. "If you really need to know, it's damage control."

•

Damage control, it turned out, involved shutting down power to the whole city.

Jim was shrugging off the holster with one arm, shoving the (not cleaned. Fuck. He'll have to come back in the evening and do it properly) rifle into the safe when the light went out, in the apartment and outside. Jim looked out of the window. The ads, the lights at the station, windows on the opposite side of the street—everything had gone dark.

He turned to Pritchard, sitting on the couch with Adam's computer on his lap. "What did you do?" Adam's auxiliary generator was humming to life; here, the electricity would soon be back, but out there? Jim very much doubted the city would be this lucky.

Pritchard shrugged. "I'm not owing you one. You helped me out, fine, thanks I guess, but I'm not letting them investigate and maybe find you and—No. Not happening."

It was a good thing Jim had never expected any sort of gratitude from him; clearly he'd get none.

"Do you have any idea what will be going on in the streets with the power out _in the whole fucking city_?" Jim enunciated so clearly his tongue hurt. He was getting angry enough to be shaking, but yelling at Pritchard never yielded results. If he wanted to practice pointless exercises, he'd rather—Fuck. He didn't even know. Just—not this. 

Thick afternoon dimness had crept inside the apartment; in it, he could hardly make out the stubborn line of Pritchard's mouth. "Doesn't matter," Pritchard said and turned his head away from Jim. "I don't want to owe you one."

Jim threw his arms into the air. The generator kicked in, the bulbs above their heads switched on with a flicker, the warm light softened Pritchard's profile into something almost hurt and—

"You keep saying it, but you wouldn't be," Jim told him, calmer and quieter than he'd intended. "You aren't."

That shrug again. Pritchard blinked up at him once, a hint of defensiveness in his eyes quickly drowned out by his drawl. "Well, it's done. Metro's out and cell towers are out; you may as well sit down and relax. Clean the guns or whatever it is you do when you're bored."

The rifle_ needed_ cleaning. And yeah, alright. As irritating as it was, Pritchard had gotten it in one: cleaning guns calmed Jim. 

"You know," he said after some time, when he was sure he wouldn't lash out again, "I argued with my boss twice in the last four days, and I argued with Adam about the shit he'd pulled in Golem, _and_ with my ex about my son's extracurriculars, and you still managed to win 'the stupidest argument of the week' prize."

Pritchard snorted. "You sure? I looked up your ex once. He seems like a real tool.”

Wait—what? "What? When did you—? No, you know what, don't answer that. Just—stop. Pritchard, what the fuck?"

"Oh, sod off. You know perfectly well it's just something I do." 

Keeping tabs. Not taking his eye off the ball. Yeah, Jim knew that about Pritchard. Just—He'd never assumed Pritchard would bother, not with Jim. For Adam, sure. But—Probably some kind of weird transference, as Auzenne would say. They sometimes fucked Adam at the same time. Watched a movie, maybe twice. Shit got to bleed over, right? He almost wanted to ask Pritchard if—Hilarious idea. "I mean it," he said instead. His voice was oddly strained. "Never, ever, do that again."

How the fuck did he let Adam talk him into this thing?

•

He made it back to the office after 6 PM. "Never doing it again," he muttered, keyed up and with a headache, when he saw Mac.

Mac laughed. "Relax. Everything's fine. I dumped the budget onto the admin staff; they said they would revise it by the end of the week. Which, I guess, probably means you'll go pester them tomorrow, but you know what? That's very much not my problem."

Jim rubbed at his temples. "Did Fletcher—?"

"_Everyone_ did their jobs," Mac said, patience obviously thinning in the face of Jim's stubborn insistence to find something to be an arse about. "You can go home, you know. The outage fucked with the systems, today's clocking hours are gone. As far as the brass's concerned, you've spent all day behind your desk."

Be it as it may, Jim couldn't be alone right now.  
  


* * *

ii. (mesmerized by charming gloom)

It was the laughter. Adam laughed so rarely that when he did—and at Jim's acerbic remark, too—Jim came to a standstill mid-step.

"I wouldn't have put it quite like that," Adam was saying, "but, shit—you're right." Still with hints of mirth in his voice.

He'd stopped, too, as if he'd noticed at once that Jim hadn't kept pace with him and settled to wait because waiting for Jim was one of those things Adam excelled at. 

Jim would cross the world for him, so these two meters or so, over paving stones, not hot coals, was nothing. Almost nothing. An everyday casual thing. Big, risky fucking chance, but Jim—Jim liked risk.

The lapels of Adam's coat were stiff and slippery from the water-repellent coating the fabric, but he'd gotten a good enough grip on them to haul Adam in. They collided more than they kissed—this one was on Jim, a little bit drunk, plenty stupid—but Adam was a firecracker under his hands, coiled tension snapping his back up and making his hands lock under Jim's elbows like a vice. Jim thought, _Wait, shit_, and tried to back off, and Adam chased him down. _Then_ it was a proper kiss, open-mouthed and with teeth, and Jim didn't even care that they stood on the quayside of the Vltava River where half of Prague could see him making a career-ending move.

They kissed like drunks do: without thought and inhibition, simply because they wanted to, and if the world had a problem with them, it was welcome to fuck off right then and there. One of them moaned into the other's mouth, one of them shoved his thigh forward, one of them curled his hand around a warm waist, under clothes; this so was not the place for this. 

But then again, where was?

The Vltava smelled of muck and dead fish. A streetlight's bulb over their heads flickered, apparently in dire need of a biocell. Adam's hands were shaking where they were touching Jim's skin. Jim thought, _No. No, I will ruin you past the point of saving._

How terribly selfish of him to not withdraw then.

Adam cradled his face, ran a thumb across his cheekbone and up, under his eye. Jim already knew how the polymer of his augs felt—he'd helped Adam up once, when the blast had knocked him down in Dubai, and later, on the VTOL cutting through the cloudy English sky, he had squeezed Adam's shoulder; something had been ending then, they'd all felt it in their bones, like being crushed by walls closing in, and the idea hadn't seemed so foolishly bad at the time—but this delicate touch was something else, as if Adam was keeping him close not out of need or want but out of joy.

It stripped Jim of choice—or so he convinced himself. He kissed Adam deeper, pushed past his lips to lick across teeth and press the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth; the shiver than ran down his spine told him it wasn't unlike touching the roof of a cathedral. Adam made a sound so small Jim would have missed it entirely if it didn't jump straight from Adam's vocal cords onto Jim's tongue.

His cock jerked in his slacks. Adam must have felt it against his thigh.

He stopped and took a step back. "Jim," he said and Jim knew he wouldn't like what he'd hear next, "Jim, wait. I need to—There's someone else."

Well, then.

He let go of Adam's coat and breathed, trying to settle on a reaction that wasn't an angry hurt; they would have to try to move past his ill-judged slip-up one way or the other and he'd rather not make it any harder on either of them. He just—He hadn't thought—He'd assumed—but he shouldn't have, should he. It didn't paint him in a particularly kind light to have thought _Adam_ and _augs_ and _alone_, all within one sentence. And it _was_ a good thing that he'd been wrong, that Adam had somebody who—

"I'm sorry," he said; he truly was. Never try anything with your subordinates, exhibition one. An honest mistake between two people who just lost their damn minds for a minute or five could be easy to correct if they swallowed their embarrassment and the instigating party was willing to apologize. (Jim was.) If they were just Adam and Jim, two guys a bit lost in a city that ate and spat out bigger men than them, he could ask Adam to forgive and forget; he'd be fine with that. (A lie.) But he couldn't in good conscience ask Adam to forget Jim's _professional misconduct_.

He tried putting more distance between them, but Adam's fingers were still bunched around the fabric of his sleeves. To pull away Jim would have to uncurl them by hand and touching Adam now didn't seem like a very bright idea. He looked Adam in the eyes, shifting and wide. Adam had retraced the shades before they'd kissed and his lips were still shiny from Jim's spit and Jim immediately remembered how they moved against his mouth. "Adam," he tried again, swallowing more than the bile gathered at the back of his throat. "That was a mistake. Mine. You can"—_kiss me again anytime_—"file a complaint. The HR—" Adam's fingers slipped from Jim's jacket, but only to close around his wrists; Jim's words died on his tongue and they stood there holding hands like preschoolers playing a ridiculous game. 

"Wait," Adam said. A wry smile twisted his mouth. "Roll back. I shouldn't have led with that."

Jim—didn't know what to do with his hands. He didn't know what to do with any of it. "But you—definitely should have? Look, we're both a bit—stumped. Go home. We can talk about this another time." Never, knowing them, especially if Adam decided to not press the matter via the official channels, as Jim was guessing he would. 

Maybe it would be better this way. Awkward for a few months, but—that would pass. Just like everything else.

Adam shook his head. "You don't understand." He smiled, genuinely this time, and Jim's pulse jumped like a rabbit's heart. "He knows I'm crazy about you." 

A hand, then, carefully moving towards Jim's face like the world's slowest bullet. Jim looked at it and couldn't tear his eyes away. "I—What?"

"Real shitty way to spring this on you, but, yeah. He knows and doesn't mind." Adam touched his face, left his hand there, warm and buzzing with electricity under the nanocarbon. "I'm sorry. I kind of thought—maybe a dinner first? I wanted to tell you before and then—"

"That's on me," Jim said immediately, because that much was true. Adam laughed. His hand shook with it, briefly, before he took it away.

Jim stupidly started missing it as soon as a gust of wind blew against his cheek.

Adam bit his lip. "I don't expect anything; I know it may not be your speed. But—it's what it is."

Jim should take this out. Tell Adam that he hoped whoever Adam was with was good for him, and walk away. They'd only kissed once and he was nearing fifty and one kiss should be something easy to bypass at this point in his life. Easy to forget.

But it was a kiss with Adam and Adam was as easy to forget as a bag of bricks to the head. "You trying to sell me on a two-for-one kind of a deal?"

Adam snorted. "God no. He's a dick. To be honest, I'm a bit sorry I'd be dragging him into your life."

It figured. With what Adam's taste in coffee, breakfast food, and acceptable tactical risks was, his taste in men was bound to be even worse. Current company included. 

Jim really should walk away.

Instead he said, "Why, you afraid you can't handle two dicks at once?" and kissed Adam before Adam's surprised laughter had a chance to settle more deeply behind his ribcage.  
  


* * *

iii. (slowly and with silent toes)

He'd promised himself that if it came to this, he wouldn't fight. Not because he didn't want to live—honestly, in the past couple months his life had turned out better than he'd had any right to expect it to after Neil and London and everything else—but because the alternative was, indubitably, worse. Jim was a loose end, one that Manderley couldn't well afford to leave hanging; Jim had always known he'd be dealt with one way or the other. It came as a sort of relief that they went for this shit again and not 'gentle pressure' exerted via Neil or Colli or—the most stomach-churning option—the kids.

Yet when his body registered the click of the window opening in the lounge, he rolled off the bed and landed surely and silently on his feet like during drills, on the force, when he'd been a young man thinking the life ahead of him would be extraordinary. Blindly, he found the gun Adam had taken to leaving on his bedside table.

Adam, Jim suspected, was a big fucking part of his current dilemma. Bloody absurd. In the event of Jim's death, Adam would be fine. He cared, Jim personally thought that too much, but first and foremost he was a survivor. He'd survive. 

Besides, he had Pritchard. 

Adam and Pritchard would both be fine. Jim was leaving them in good—each other's—hands.

In his hand, the too-familiar weight and shape of the gun, elongated by the stretched-out line of the silencer, grounded him. Thinking about Adam had been a mistake. Thinking about Adam made him want to live with a yearning that had taken him by surprise. He couldn't allow himself to dwell on that now. He needed to—fight.

Fine, he thought to himself angrily. Fine. So be it. He would fight.

He crouched and moved past the billiard table to peek above the railing. A hit squad was filing silently into his lounge. Ten assailants. He was flattered. And he had a clear shot.

He'd taken two of them out before the rest responded with fire. Not the best-trained bunch around, then. He ducked under the table, waited for the steps on the stairs—two sets, okay, there was room on the stairs for two, but too quick to be careful—and shot the first fucker whose head popped out above the landing floor right between the eyes.

The second halted. Smart. Jim still had the higher ground. He crawled out from under the table and jumped behind the corner. His couldn't keep it up and his luck wouldn't last much longer, but—it was nice to know he still had some skills in him. He reloaded.

A crash downstairs, followed by a muffled groan and a shot and another shot. 

Jim rushed out, not caring much about precautions and taking cover because, well—Maybe he'd been stalling all along. Maybe he'd somehow known it would end like this, with Adam in the blur of black and gold, appearing almost like a ghost if not for the smell of stale cigarettes and sweat.

Time seemed to ripple and distort around him. Slow down. Jim was walking toward Adam but on every step down his feet got glued to the stone, and it wasn't only because of the blood seeping down.

Adam didn't need much help; not being able to give it to him punched the air out of Jim's lungs anyway.

The terminal by Jim's door pinged. The money he'd paid for that shit was truly outrageous—the highest level of protection guaranteed—yet the door opened after maybe seven seconds, maybe less. It was hard to say, with how his head was. Pritchard peeked inside, a stun gun in his hand. Their eyes met and it was enough for Pritchard to move, stupidly forward and to the point. A flutter to his right. Someone alive in the kitchen, someone who—Jim fired. 

Adam killed the last two guys; then it was quiet.

No, Jim realized, his apartment wasn't quiet—his neighbors had to call the cops, perhaps there was shouting, those people looked like they shouted a lot—he just didn't hear anything. His fingers locked on the gun and didn't uncurl no matter how strongly he tried to get them to do it. His body was shaking so violently his knees gave out. God, worse than an eighteen-year-old on their first mission. He stumbled down.

Later, it would come to him in flashbacks. Adam's strong arms around him. Pritchard taking away the gun. Together they shoved Jim into blood-stained clothes. Then there were—the vents? Fresh air?

At the time, he didn't register anything.

He came to, shivering, on a cold street. Pritchard was steering him with a strong grip on his upper arm. "What the fuck?" Jim rasped, not sure what he was really asking about.

"You back?" Pritchard asked. "I'm taking you to mine."

•

Pritchard's place was a fucking mess, but for perhaps the first time in his life Jim barely noticed the strewn socks and take-out containers and empty beer bottles. Pritchard was ranting nonetheless, "Yeah, yeah, it offends your military sensibilities, I get it," as he dragged Jim into the bathroom and shoved him under the shower. He pushed Jim's jacket off his shoulders and slid it down the length of Jim's arms; Jim had never had someone undress him with so much blind annoyance. But when the jacket hit the floor, Pritchard's hands stilled. "There's blood on your arm. You injured?"

"Just a graze," Jim muttered. He pulled his T-shirt off and turned his back to Pritchard, unzipping the jeans Adam and Pritchard had gotten him into and sliding them down his hips. He turned the water on, satisfied with Pritchard's hiss when he had to jump away to avoid getting soaked. "I'll be fine," he said, but the water drowned out the words.

He couldn't believe he was alive.

He let the steam build up and up, until he couldn't see the wall right in front of his eyes.

•

Pritchard was waiting for him with a first aid kit when he got out of the bathroom, towel around his waist as Jim's clothes had disappeared from the floor. "Seriously," Jim said, "I'm fine. Where are—"

"You'll bleed all over my sheets," Pritchard replied.

Jim glanced over at his unmade bed. It didn't look particularly inviting, but God, he wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep for a hundred years and wake up in a different time, in a different place. He'd never been one to hide, but—Fuck, what was his next step even supposed to be?

Pritchard had apparently taken his silence as compliance and was clumsily cleaning his wound with a wipe. It stung. Pritchard's hair brushed against Jim's shoulder with his every breath. Jim itched to get away from him, but for some reason he wasn't yanking his arm out of his grip. "You don't have to do it," he said, mostly to break up the suffocating closeness. "Let me dress and I'll be out of your hair."

It earned him an incredulous glance. "Your clothes had blood on them, Miller. I threw them, well. Away. And where the fuck are you going to go?"

"You—what? I can't stay here. They just—"

"Yeah. They did. Which is why you can't go back to your place. And, might I add, your work's not very safe either. What with your boss being in on it."

Somehow, hearing it said out loud scraped the surreal tint off the situation that wasn't even so out there in his line of work. "I'll figure something out," he sighed. "You really don't have to be—so Adam about it."

"God forbid. Becoming Jensen's on top of my nightmares list." Pritchard finished with the wipe and opened a packet of medical tape. "Stand still. I've never done it before."

Great. "It explains so many things."

Pritchard grinned at him then, sharp and dangerous and on edge. "You can just say 'thank you' next time. It doesn't bite."

Which—pot, kettle; kettle, pot.

But no. Jim could be better. He could be better, no problem. "Thank you," he said, in his flattest voice, used mostly on his kids were they throwing fits about the greens with their dinner. Bad choice. He'd rather think about literally anything else. His voice cracked, just slightly, when he started, "I'll be sure to rec—"

Pritchard surged up. The tape wasn't clinging very well to Jim's skin, but Jim forgot to mention it as Pritchard grabbed him by the jaw and kissed him. They'd never done it before, not even with Adam there; they knew how they fucked and how they looked when they came, but actual touch, actual taste of each other passed from mouth to mouth—that was new. 

"God, you're an ass," Pritchard said when he came up for air. "If I suck you off, will you shut up?" He pushed Jim onto the bed. 

They had known how they banged—Pritchard lacked patience while Jim had too much of it; Jim liked it slow and hard while Pritchard fucked fast, but never lost himself in it, Adam's body a bridge neither of them was interested in crossing. It was different now, and not only because Jim was so tired all he could do was grab Pritchard's hair and close his eyes and throw his head back and open his mouth.

And if something slipped out of it, well, Pritchard's head was between his thighs; he couldn't hear him.

Pritchard sucked him not like he wanted to make Jim forget, but like he forgot himself in Jim and in the end it was so very easy to just—follow him.

•

Adam found them—not snuggling, but with Pritchard snoring against Jim's chest. He didn't seem to wake when Adam lightly slapped his leg. "Kick him off if you want to. He falls out of bed frequently. Never feels it."

"Don't lie," Pritchard muttered and threw an arm around Jim's waist.

Adam slipped out of his clothes and behind Jim. He kissed Jim's neck. His mouth was warm and his breath on Jim's skin was warmer and when he asked, "Will you be alright?" Jim wanted to give him more certainty than he himself had.

He shrugged. Adam's arm settled above Pritchard's, closer to Jim's heart. 

He had this, Jim realized with a start. A space carved out of two lives; if he died or disappeared, his absence would stay with them to scar over ragged edges that used to meet until he'd changed them irreparably.

It wasn't a pleasant thought. It was mildly terrifying. But it had grown solid under his feet and over his head, and when Adam curled around his back and Pritchard pressed against his chest, it became solid around his body, too. 

A certainty of a different kind: one not to give, but to get.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't resist writing you these three, dear recip. Figuring out how they would fit together was super rewarding and I hope you like the end result. Happy MFTF!
> 
> To the people who helped me along the way—you know who you are—my very sincere thanks!


End file.
